There are a dozen charming cities on the edge of Cooperstown, New York, where a suitable adjunct to the National Baseball Hall of Fame could be built.

There’s Pittsfield, Roseboom, Little Falls, and Seward (as in sewer).

This new satellite of baseball’s shrine – let’s call it the Fall of Fame* – would house all of the baseball players whom we remember as being fantastic players and athletes but who submitted to a base urge that took the shine off their career.

It will require a large building.

The results of the latest Hall of Fame balloting by members of the Baseball Writer’s Assn. of America (BBWAA) will be announced Tuesday and the betting line says Goose Gossage gets a plaque and Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice and Tim Raines are in the conversation.

But there’s no denying that baseball has a new statistical acronym – OBP, ERA, WHIP and RBI, please make room for PED – that overshadows regular folk like Goose and Bert.

The Hall’s annual election provides us a clear tipping point for the performance-enhancing drug era. Last year’s ballot for the class of 2007 gave us all-time good guys like Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr., but it also featured Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti for the first time.

Every ballot for the next decade will feature other players who have been linked with PEDs. This year, it’s David Justice and Chuck Knoblauch in addition to holdover McGwire, whom I’m willing to wager will get half as many votes this year as he did last (128).

These are just the names of players mentioned in the Mitchell Report and from other sources, and who knows how many other names will emerge in the years to come as the government continues its investigations.

Roseboom seems like such a perfectly named town for the new Fall of Fame*.

Every player mentioned isn’t necessarily a Hall of Famer, but when the number of tainted names overwhelms the names of those who merit an X by their name, it’s a story with a cloudy and long arc. There are very few first-ballot candidates in the next few years. There’s cinch-selection Rickey Henderson in 2009, and then arguable candidates like Roberto Alomar and Barry Larkin in 2010 and Jeff Bagwell in 2011.

There are a lot of active players who are to date above reproach, so it’s not a total wash for the real Hall.

But it’s going to be a long time before any of these guys are on a ballot.

Perhaps the best thing that could happen is for the class of 2008 to include players who, with reasonable confidence, played PED-free.

Here are five players whose election Tuesday would make true baseball fans smile, even if said fan might quibble with their candidacy:

Goose Gossage. The former Padre and Yankee pitched for 22 seasons and was just 21 votes shy of election last year on a ballot that Ripken and Gwynn dominated. So he seems like a sure thing this time.

Gossage has the third-highest average of innings per appearance of any Hall of Fame-worthy closer, and 52 of his 310 saves lasted two innings or longer. Gossage was the last of the era of multiple-inning closers, guys who made appearances before the ninth. He was still effective in his last five seasons, too, when he moved into the set-up role.

Bert Blyleven. If someone told you a candidate had 287 career wins, ranked fifth all-time in strikeouts, posted 60 career shutouts (sixth all-time) including 15 1-0 wins, and had more career wins than Robin Roberts, Ferguson Jenkins, Bob Feller, Carl Hubbell and Bob Gibson, you probably wouldn’t argue his candidacy.

Blyleven had just one 20-win season and was rarely mentioned as “the best” pitcher of his generation, didn’t win a Cy Young Award and wasn’t even elected to many all-star teams. He did win two World Series, though, and he was top pitcher on his teams more often than not. He played on some miserable teams, too, like the early ’80s Indians.

Tim Raines. The top first-year candidate ranks fifth all-time in steals with 808, played 23 seasons with a .294 career average and .385 on-base percentage, and has the highest percentage of successful steals (.857) of anyone with 300 or more steals in his career. The fact that steals has been devalued as a statistic of late works against him, as does the fact he played most of his career for the Expos and White Sox.

Allen Trammell. The Tigers’ solid shortstop hit .285 in his career. He hit 185 home runs, 10th all-time among shortstops, had 1,003 RBI, eighth all-time, and won four Gold Gloves. His numbers compare favorably to Hall of Famers like Phil Rizzuto and Pee Wee Reese; he just didn’t play in an era or in a city where he gathered headlines. Of course, headlines are relative these days.

Jim Rice: When he was active, the Boston slugger ranked first among his peers in runs, hits, home runs and RBI and ranked fourth in batting. He had 2,452 hits in 15 seasons and hit 382 home runs. That looks puny compared to the slugging of today, but there are no questions about their legitimacy.

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